What to pack for Hawaii?

Re: What to pack for Hawaii?

• OliveOilsMom member

  

  April 2014

  Basically, when we would leave anywhere for the day, we would be wearing our bathing suits under our clothes, because there are so many places that you can just stop and take a swim (even if you are hiking somewhere).  Also leave a few dry towels in your car if you can too.  So H & I each had 4 bathing suits packed.  I did bring a casual dress or two.  Overall, people wear t shirts and shorts everywhere.  You will find certain parts of Oahu aren't as casual, mostly in Waikiki.

  Try to bring all the sunscreen you will need for your entire trip.  It's cheaper here on the mainland.  We also packed our bottle of aloe, just in case - which we ended up needing!

  Enjoy your trip!  Kauai is amazing!  My favorite so far!  If you have time for it, I highly recommend the Tubing Adventure offered by Kauai Backcountry Adventures!

  

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• daria24 member

  

  April 2014

  Unless you want to eat a restaurant that specifies that men need to wear a jacket-everyone is dressed in shorts/casual dresses to go out to eat. Keep in mind that "business wear" in Hawaii means an aloha shirt-not a dress shirt and tie. So even nicer places, the men are wearing aloha shirts and shorts or pants. 

  
  

  I second bringing enough sun screen-it's practically twice the price in Hawaii! 

  
  

  Usually I would wear a swim suit, shorts, and a tank top during the day (and bring a jacket or long sleeve cover up) and then change into a casual dress for dinner. There are a couple places you can go where it's a little cooler-Waimea canyon is very misty, and cooler. Also if you take any boat trips, you might want a long sleeve cover up or jacket to keep your skin protected from the wind/sun. 

  
  

  If you plan on doing some hiking, I recommend bringing Tevas or other sturdy sandals-you often have to cross streams  and heavy hiking boots are not fun. 

  

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• lovesclimbing member

  

  April 2014

  When I was in Hawaii, I pretty much wore casual tank tops and t-shirts and shorts. I would bring a light jacket of some sort just in case. A pair of long pants is good, especially if you'll do hiking. You could double up by getting pants with legs that zip off to become shorts. Swimsuits under clothes or at least with you are always a good idea.
  
  Whether or not you need dressier clothes depends on what you want to do while there.  I would do some googling and find out if there is anything you want to go to that you might want to wear dressier clothes to. If there's not, well, there you go.  And really, if you're a little more dressed up than the other people in the restaurant, it really doesn't matter.
  

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• kkleigh10 member

  

  April 2014

  Thanks for the advice, particularly about the sunscreen! I'm an SPF-50 kind of girl
  
  I'll do some looking online to see if any "fancier" restaurants look good to us, otherwise I'll keep it casual.
  
  @OliveOilsMom I'll definitely look into the Tubing Adventure, that sounds right up our alley! We'll be there for 10 days so we'll have plenty of time for all that kind of stuff. Did you go on a helicopter tour? We're planning to book one online ahead of time, so if there's any tour in particular that you've been on let me know!

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• OliveOilsMom member

  

  April 2014

  @kkleigh10 We did not do a helicopter tour.  Instead we booked with Captain Andy's and did the dinner cruise.  It was tons of fun and totally worth it!  I know other posters on this board recommend Captain Andy's as well.

  When H & I return to Kauai in January, I would like to do zip line tour, which we would also do with Kauai Backcountry Adventures since we had such a great experience with them.

  I also recommend the Chocolate Tour at Steelgrass farms.  My H is a chocoholic, so it was a must!  As a casual chocolate eater, I also enjoyed the tour which offered samples of the other fruits they were growing in addition to the chocolate.  We will be doing this tour again too. 

  If wine is more your thing, I believe they have a wine tasting tour somewhere on the island.

  And if you like BBQ, Scotty's BBQ offered awesome ocean views and delicious food!  The guava BBQ sauce they had was sooooo good!

  

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• daria24 member

  

  April 2014

  We didn't do a helicopter tour (H would have passed out) but if something you 100% want to do, I would book one for Oahu vs Kauai. Kauai is the wettest island and your tour is more likely to be canceled due to rain. When we were at Waimea Canyon it was pouring and we did see some tours still going on, but I doubt they could have seen much. Not to mention I would have been terrified in that weather. 

  

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• delujm0 member

  

  April 2014

  Beach vacations are really hard for me to pack for for some reason.  I've repeatedly packed for 2-week excursions to Europe in a carry-on bag, and just two weeks ago i packed for 10 days in Tokyo/Hong Kong in an even smaller carryon...yet when i went to St. Lucia for 4 nights in December i needed to borrow space in my FI's bag.  I don't know why it's so hard.

   

  Obviously you need bathing suits, and 1-2 coverups.  If you're planning to hike, you'll need some good hiking clothes and shoes (1-2 outfits you can reuse should be fine).  Flip flops for the beach.  Usually i throw in a pair of casual shorts and a couple tank tops just in case, and i normally would wear a sundress for dinner every night.  definitely bring sunscreen with you.  I think i have trouble at the beach because i wind up executing multiple costume changes throughout the day. it should be so easy to pack for!  but it's not.

   

  A good way to save space is to leave the espadrilles/high heels at home.  you're going to want to be wearing flats with your sundresses anyway, especially if you'll be walking in sand or around a pool.  On several of my most recent beach vacations i've wasted precious space in my bag with big espedrilles/wedges that never wound up being worn.  flats are really all you need.  Also, when i went to Hawaii two years ago i wasted a TON of space bringing gym clothes and shoes...and of course i never went to the gym.  i was doing more than enough hiking to count as my workouts for the week.  i usually just leave gym clothes/running shoes at home now when i travel, because i never actually use them.

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• Pepper6 member

  

  April 2014

  When we go to Hawaii for a week, I usually pack about 3-4 swim suits, 2-3 pairs of shorts, 5-6 tank tops, 2-3 short cotton dresses, and 1-2 cotton maxi dresses, 1 pair of pants (for any excursions that require them), & 1 light jacket.  For shoes, I pack 1 pair of flip flops, 1 pair of regular flat sandals, and 1 pair of closed-toe water/hiking shoes.  I usually never have any problems fitting all this into a carry on sized bag. 

  
  

  Your travel agent is right that there's not much in the way of dressing up.  Our most recent trip to Hawaii, we went to a nice restaurant (about $50-$60pp) and I wore one of my maxi dresses and flat sandals, H wore shorts and a button up Hawaiian shirt (no hat though).  Although, if you are staying on Waikiki, there are a few restaurants/clubs that can get a little more dressy if you wanted to, but it's still very much on the casual side of dressy.

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• kkleigh10 member

  

  April 2014

  Thank you so much for the great advice! 

  
  

  @OliveOilsMom - I'm going to look into to everything you recommended. We decided to go all-out for the honeymoon and do everything we want: helicopter, zip lining, dinner cruise, the works. We plan to start a family right away so this could be our last hurrah for a while!

  
  

  @daria24 - good point about the weather on Kauai, but unfortunately we're only spending 2 days in Oahu and I'm not sure we'll have time for a helicopter tour there. One piece of advice I got was to book the helicopter tour on Kauai for really early in the trip, that way if it has to be rescheduled due to weather we'll have plenty of time for it.

  
  

  @delujm0 - YES, for some reason beach packing is the worst! I've traveled through Asia with a carry-on but going to Hawaii for 10 days has me paralyzed. The shoes are absolutely what I should leave behind...I consistently pack giant espidrilles that I wear one time but they take up half my luggage. So dumb!

  
  

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• Miclan88 member

  

  April 2014

  ok about the sunblock, something my husband and I totally didn't think about was that we could not bring our regular size sunblock with us on our side trip to Oahu because we were not checking any bags. so even though we brought it with us to Hawaii, we still had to buy some. if you can, bring a travel size sunblock, or a travel size container to put sunblock in that way you can bring it if you island hop

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• winelover123 member

  

  April 2014

  Definitely bring sunblock. If you run out, see if there's a Walmart. We didn't go to Kauai or Oahu - we went to Maui and the Big Island. When we ran out of sunscreen on the BI, there was a walmart we went to to stock up. 

  
  

  I packed super light and wished I had packed a few more clothing options. I packed maxi dresses (it can get pretty breezy, so I didn't pack any short dresses) and leggings (the type that go just under the knees) and tunic tops. I also packed swimsuits, a cover up, a hat, sunglasses, flip flops, sandals with straps and my hiking/water boots. I'd suggest getting a pair of shoes that double as water shoes and hiking shoes - I got H a pair before we left and we were both thankful to have them when we went swimming under waterfalls. There were some sharp rocks apparently! 

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